So long and thanks for all the fish

Elections

Dr Kevin Bonham has a post Abbott Fastest Ever To Lose Poll Lead with this helpful advance summary: 1. Following the recent Newspoll, the new Abbott Government has lost the two-party preferred polling lead. 2. This does not necessarily mean […]

My attention was drawn to a series of articles under the heading The Meltdown by Peter Hartcher by Mark and then this post by John Quiggin. I thought them well worth a read, but found the links from Quiggin’s post […]

The failures of process surrounding the incredibly close Western Australian Senate election have led no less a figure than Professor George Williams to call for electronic voting to be considered again: Electronic voting deserves serious consideration. Moving to an electronic […]

I’ve always wondered if the claim, often made by rightwingers in the ALP, that whoever is their standard bearer is just *more electable* has just become one of those supposedly self-evident nostrums that people repeat without even thinking about it. […]

I watched the first of three televised “debates” between Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten the other night. They will meet again in Melbourne tomorrow night and appear together on Q&A on Monday night. One of the interesting things about this […]

One argument I made in my earlier post about Mr Abbott’s relaunch of the Culture Wars is that he won’t have noticed that civil society is stronger than it was in the Howard years. It’s not just “clicktivism” – there […]

Now that the election counting for the House of Representatives is done and dusted (with Clive Palmer’s 36 vote victory in Fairfax being the last outstanding datum of import; though see the interesting Senate races still undeclared), there’s been a […]

I probably don’t need to link to any of the multifarious commentators who found the blatant partisanship of the Murdoch tabloids in the campaign offensive and anti-democratic. Generally, I’m eschewing purchasing News Limited titles, but I did take a look […]

MB writes: I’ve asked a number of the contributors to our discussion at Avid Reader around the CPD’s Pushing Our Luck to write up some of the themes and thoughts from the night. Second cab off the rank is Miriam Lyons. I’ve extracted the first section […]

Sophie Mirabella has conceded defeat to Cathy McGowan in the Victorian seat of Indi. At last night’s Centre for Policy Development book launch at Avid Reader in Brisbane (see here), Miriam Lyons remarked that other rural and regional communities, and […]